Philosophy Commons^™

Stability And Resilience In Rawls's Political Liberalism, Grace Campbell

Doctoral Dissertations

Stability and resilience are complementary attributes in John Rawls’s most developed liberal system. In his early theory, stable cooperation is guaranteed by liberal society’s single, shared conception of justice. Rawls’s more pluralist theory introduces a possibility of cooperation without a consensus about justice, but it does not explain stable cooperation. If citizens are committed to a family of reasonable, liberal conceptions of justice, a pluralist liberal system can be stable because it is also resilient. Though pluralism increases discord in dynamic conditions, citizens can appeal to a shared family of ideals to adapt and restore allegiance. This adaptive capacity is …

Oppression, Civility, And The Politics Of Resistance, Alex M. Richardson

Doctoral Dissertations

Oppression based on social group membership has been and remains a major injustice which thrives in modern liberal democracies like the United States. Organized political resistance to oppression and the structures that perpetuate it has taken many forms throughout history, from the early acts of revolution that founded the United States, to the nineteenth century abolitionist movement against slavery, to the New Deal-era labor struggles and Black civil rights movement of the twentieth century and the LGBTQ+ rights movement of recent history. The moral and political legacy of these historical struggles, as well as the extent to which the surrounding …

An Ethics Of Amusement, Ashley Caroline Mobley

Doctoral Dissertations

Human beings often hold one another morally responsible for what we find funny or fail to find funny. Though this practice is common and so demands philosophical attention, it remains underexplored in the literature. The purpose of this project is to devote attention to this practice by developing an ethics of amusement.

In chapter 2, I argue for why amusement is an emotion according to incongruity theory—the dominant theory of humor and amusement. With this in mind, I argue in chapter 3 that we are responsible for our emotions insofar as we have emotional agency. In particular, while we cannot …

Autonomy, Oppression, And Respect, Andrea Wilson

Doctoral Dissertations

While it is intuitive to many that oppressive socialization undermines autonomy in virtue of its ability to shape the desires and values of the oppressed, it’s difficult to provide a plausible account of autonomy that can explain when and why socialization is autonomy undermining. I provide such an account, arguing that self-respect is a necessary condition for autonomous choice and that oppressive socialization functions in part by undermining the self-respect of the oppressed. On my account, our choices lack autonomy to the degree that they are motivated by a failure to respect ourselves as beings whose plans and desires matter …

The Epistemic Dimensions Of Moral Responsibility And Respect, John Robison

Doctoral Dissertations

What epistemic conditions must one satisfy to be morally responsible for an action or attitude? A common worry is that robust epistemic requirements would have disastrous implications for our responsibility attributing practices: we would be unable to make epistemically justified responsibility attributions, or we would be licensed to disrespectfully excuse agents for their sincerely held beliefs. Those more optimistic about robust epistemic requirements inadvertently make them too demanding to explain the moral successes of ordinary agents. The present project shows how both the pessimists and optimists rely on instructively mistaken assumptions in epistemology, ethics, and action theory, and it culminates …

The Mismatch Problem For Act Consequentialism, Robert Gruber

Doctoral Dissertations

I present the mismatch problem for Act Consequentialism, and I critically evaluate some popular solutions before offering my own solution to a specific version of the problem. The mismatch problem arises for Act Consequentialism when a group could have done better, but no individual in the group had an alternative with a better outcome. In such cases, the theory delivers mismatched verdicts: it condemns what the group does, but it cannot condemn any of the individual acts. In the first chapter of the dissertation, I explain exactly how this problem works. In the next four chapters, I identify a variety …

The Philosophical Value Of Reflective Endorsement, Rachel Robison

Doctoral Dissertations

Through the years, many philosophers have appealed to reflective endorsement to address important philosophical problems. In this dissertation, I evaluate the merits of those approaches. I first consider Christine Korsgaard’s appeal to reflective endorsement to solve what she calls “the normative problem.” I then consider Harry Frankfurt’s use of reflective endorsement as part of his account of “caring,” which plays a crucial role in his accounts of agency, free will, and personhood. I then turn to Marilyn Friedman’s use of reflective endorsement to explain autonomous action. Finally, I turn to Alan Gibbard’s use of reflective endorsement as part of an …

The Concept Of Intrinsic Goodness: Essays In Moorean Moral Philosophy, Miles Tucker

Doctoral Dissertations

I defend and explicate a Moorean program in value theory. I claim that intrinsic goodness is the fundamental concept of axiology, and argue that the notion should be understood as G.E. Moore suggested in the Principia Ethica. In the first three chapters, I address popular challenges to the Moorean project, including objections raised by Judith Jarvis Thomson, Shelly Kagan, and Christine Korsgaard. After, I turn to explication: I attend to the connection between goodness and other normative notions, and present what I take to be the most attractive version of the Moorean view. Finally, I address a perennial puzzle …

The Significance Of Rousseau’S Concept Of Amour-Propre In Rawls, Xinghua Wang

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation defends the view that there is a Rousseauvian interpretation of Rawls’s political philosophy by focusing on the significance of amour-propre in Rawls’s political philosophy. In the first chapter, I introduce my central thesis and chapter arrangements and compare my Rousseauvian interpretation with other interpretations of Rawls. In the second chapter, I introduce Rousseau’s concept of amour-propre and try to defend Rawls’s wide view of amourpropre, according to which, amour-propre has both a positive and a negative form. In the third chapter, I argue that Rousseau’s concept of amour-propre plays a significant role in Rawls’s conception of justice as …

Population, Consumption, And Procreation: Ethical Implications For Humanity’S Future, Trevor Grant Hedberg

Doctoral Dissertations

Human population growth is a contributing factor to a number of significant environmental problems. My dissertation addresses both the negative environmental effects of human population growth and what ought to be done to curtail them. Specifically, I defend two main claims: (1) we have a duty to reduce human population, particularly those of us with large ecological footprints, and (2) morally permissible social policies can satisfy this duty.

I begin by addressing three well-known issues in population ethics that could serve as the basis for objections to reducing population: the Repugnant Conclusion, the Non-Identity Problem, and the Asymmetry. I then …

Fallibility And Normativity, Joshua Dipaolo

Doctoral Dissertations

We are fallible, and knowledge of our fallibility has normative implications. But these normative implications appear to conflict with other compelling epistemic norms. We therefore appear to face a choice: reject fallibility-based norms or reject these other epistemic norms. I argue that there is a plausible third option: reconcile these two sets of norms. Once we properly understand the nature of each of these norms, we aren’t forced to reject either.

Time To Leave Uchronia: Queer Eco-Temporalities For A Livable World, Claire S. Brault

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation is a Feminist contribution to Environmental Political Theory focused on temporality. My research investigates the tension between the urgent need to act fast in a fast-changing world, and the necessity for time to pause and think through such radical and rapid changes. As it signals our nearing the planet’s limits, the emergence of the “anthropocene” crisis challenges growth-driven “progress.” I begin this dissertation with a survey of Environmental Thought that helps situate my contribution to the ongoing debates in this field, underscoring that as ecosophers pose the question of the nonhuman, in so doing they also are confronted …

Variations On Some Rossian Themes, Kristian Olsen

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I develop and defend some of W. D. Ross’s moral views. Ross’s views, I argue, are often highly plausible, though it is also often the case that variations on (or modifications to) his views are needed in order to remain philosophically tenable. In my dissertation, I explain why these variations are necessary and what they should look like. In chapter 1, I discuss Ross’s theory of moral rightness in his most important work, The Right and the Good. In chapters 2 and 3, I correct various misunderstandings about Ross’s position: I argue that he is no …

Responsibility, Blame And The Psychopath, Matthew William Ruble

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the moral responsibility of psychopaths. I begin with an analysis of the concept of psychopathy by situating it within the context of a central debate in the philosophy of psychiatry over the conceptual nature of mental illness to demonstrate that psychopathy is an inherently value-laden concept. I argue against the disease-model of psychopathy and against their automatic exemption from moral responsibility as argued for by many moral philosophers. Psychopaths possess sufficient agency such that exempting them from moral responsibility is problematic both epistemically and morally. Yet psychopaths frequently offer reasons for their behavior that reveal their distance …

The Green Staff Of Asclepius: Envisioning Sustainable Medicine, Jason Lee Fishel

Doctoral Dissertations

To make society sustainable our institutions must also become sustainable. As an institution, health care contributes to environmental degradation. While unsurprising, contributions to environmental degradation increase risk factors for disease and illness, effectively frustrating the goals of medicine. To find ways to make health care sustainable I begin by reviewing the literature on sustainability from within environmental ethics and two previous attempts at envisioning sustainable health care in order to learn what to include in a vision of sustainable health care. Then I examine problems specific to making medicine sustainable by investigating how sustainability might affect the principles of medicine. …

Antigone Claimed, "I Am A Stranger": Democracy, Membership And Unauthorized Immigration, Andres Fabian Henao Castro

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation offers a new framework through which to theorize contemporary democratic practices by attending to the political agency of unauthorized immigrants. I argue that unauthorized immigrants themselves, by claiming their own ambiguous legal condition as a legitimate basis for public speech, are able to open up the boundaries of political membership and to render the foundations of democracy contingent, that is to say, they are able to reopen the question about who counts as a member of the demos. I develop this argument by way of a close reading of Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone[1], which allows me to …

The "Vast And Terrible" Trauma: American Literary Naturalism, Ethics, And Levinas, Tyler Joseph Efird

Doctoral Dissertations

In an 1896 essay, Frank Norris wrote that the reading world should abandon those “teacup tragedies” to which it had grown accustomed and embrace a new literature that would depict a “vast and terrible drama.” Realism, Norris claimed, could not be used to achieve an earnest portrait of the conditions that mark individual lives under capitalism. Instead, the world needed a romantic wrestling with the forces of existential inscrutability. Also, the perceived need for literature to depict a clear ethical system needed revising from the perspective of American literary naturalism, a school long denigrated for apparent moral vacuity. Through excruciating …

Searching For Consensus: Shared Decision Making And Clinical Ethics, Meghan Estell Bungo

Doctoral Dissertations

The focus of this dissertation is the search for consensus in the context of clinical ethics—physician-patient interactions, ethics consultations, and ethics committee meetings focused on a particular patient’s care. I argue that consensus, when achieved through a process of shared deliberation that I outline, is the hallmark of the morally correct decision.

While philosophers have generally denigrated consensus as a guide to morally correct decisions, hospital ethics committees and President’s Councils charged with making recommendations about how to resolve moral conflicts in the clinical setting have clearly valued and aimed at the achievement of consensus. Assuming this search for consensus …

Rawls, Religion And The Ethics Of Citizenship: Toward A Liberal Reconciliation, Jeffrey Michael Cervantez

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the conflict between religion and Rawls’s liberalism. Often Rawls’s critics contend that the idea of public reason is hostile to religion or unfriendly to citizens of faith. I argue that this concern is misguided. A careful analysis of Rawls’s work demonstrates that he is far more welcoming to religion than is sometimes claimed. To defend this thesis I put forward what I take to be the best interpretation of Rawls’s idea of public reason, one that I think is immune to most of the standard objections.

Nevertheless, there are some lingering challenges to public reason that need …

Just War And Human Rights: Fighting With Right Intention, Todd Allan Burkhardt

Doctoral Dissertations

Under the nonideal conditions of our world, war is sometimes morally permissible, perhaps even required. Just war theory aims to make sense of this. It does so, on my view, by allowing war only if pursued with ‘right intention.’ In order permissibly to go to war, a state must not only have a just cause and limit its war-making activity to that necessary to vindicate the just cause, both required in order to engage in war with ‘right intention,’ but it must also seek to vindicate its just cause in a manner likely to yield a ‘just and lasting peace.’ …

Enhancing The Virtues Of Students, Gavin Gearhart Enck

Doctoral Dissertations

Discussions about the permissibility of students using enhancements in education are often framed by the question, “Is a student who uses cognitive-enhancing drugs cheating?” Some argue that students who use these cognitive-enhancing drugs are cheating because these drugs provide an unfair advantage that violates rules of fair competition in education. Others argue that students who use cognitive-enhancing drugs are not cheating because these drugs are merely another progressive educational tool, such as a calculator or computer. While the question of cheating is interesting, it is but only one question concerning the permissibility of enhancement in education. Another interesting question is, …

Minding Nature: A Defense Of A Sentiocentric Approach To Environmental Ethics, Joel P. Macclellan

Doctoral Dissertations

Environmental philosophers allege that philosophical views supporting the animal liberation movement are theoretically and practically inconsistent with environmentalism. While it is true that some animal ethicists argue that we ought to intervene extensively in nature such as the prevention of predation, these views take controversial positions in value theory and normative theory: (i) hedonism as a value theory, and (ii) a view of normativity which places the good before the right, e.g. maximizing utilitarianism, or a rights theory that includes strong positive rights, i.e. animals are entitled to a certain level of welfare or protection from harm. Importantly, environmental philosophers’ …

Collateral: Poems, Joshua Jon Robbins

Doctoral Dissertations

In the lyric tradition of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Terrible Sonnets and James Wright’s odes to the Midwest, the poems in Collateral interrogate the complexities of faith and doubt in middle-class America and present a witness compelled to translate suburbia’s landscapes and evangelical banalities into a testimony of hard truths. These poems explore the emotional exhaustion that accompanies language’s broken connection to ideal meaning and how both are unable to fully correspond to our lives. The manuscript is also an exploration of my own corresponding lyric struggle to reconcile what is and what should be, the personal and the political …

When One Should Forgive: Eirenistic Responses To Wrongdoing, David Court Lewis

Doctoral Dissertations

In my dissertation I use Nicholas Wolterstorff’s conception of the good life (eirenéism), which serves as the foundation for his theory of rights, to argue for a new ethics of forgiveness that incorporates the necessary relational features of forgiveness, while at the same time providing substantive normative guidance in regards to when one should forgive. I, then, show that eirenistic forgiveness implies there is an obligation to forgive: a repentant wrongdoer has a right to be forgiven that creates certain obligations for victims to forgive.

I, like Wolterstorff, find such an implication repugnant, and so I spend the majority of …

Justice, Health, And Normal Function: A Political Foundation For Just Health Distribution, Erik Randall Krag

Doctoral Dissertations

Health is a particularly important social good, not least because it protects equality of opportunity: whatever goals we have, we need health to pursue them. Justice requires that we protect equality of opportunity, and so a just society must protect the health of its citizens. However, health resources are scarce; hence, theories of justice must consider how to distribute them fairly. Such distributional schemes must meet two requirements: first, they must fix what counts as a health need, and second, they must determine how to prioritize health needs. Existing discussions often focus on the second requirement alone, but this risks …

Artificial Nutrition And Hydration For Infants With Life-Terminating Conditions: Rethinking The Catholic Position, L William Uhl

Doctoral Dissertations

Infants with life-terminating conditions (ILTCs) are those whose conditions prevent them from living more than two years. When these infants have difficulty assimilating food and fluids orally, doctors can provide nutrition and hydration through artificial means. While artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH) can provide benefits, it can also result in complications leading to pain and/or distress in addition to that which an ILTC may already be experiencing from one or more underlying conditions.

Many medical experts maintain that withholding or withdrawing ANH can help a patient’s body produce its own analgesics. I consider four categories of ILTCs: 1) infants who …

A Rawlsian Case For Public Judgment, Justin Matthew Deaton

Doctoral Dissertations

We can best understand the moral obligations of citizens and officials concerning public reason as set out by John Rawls when two differing standards latent in his body of work are made explicit. The weaker standard, which I call Public Representation (or PR), is exegetically supported primarily by the proviso found in his “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited”. PR allows that citizens may deliberate over serious political matters, both internally and with others, according to whatever perspective and using whatever reasons they please, so long as they believe the positions they advocate are adequately just and adequately justifiable with …

Wittgenstein And Aesthetic Reasoning With Stories In The Bioethics Classroom, Michael Woods Nash

Doctoral Dissertations

Wittgenstein once remarked that the same kind of reasoning that occurs in ordinary conversations about works of art can be found “in Ethics, but also in Philosophy.” That observation has been almost entirely overlooked by his commentators. What is aesthetic reasoning? What does it look like in conversations about art? And where might we find examples of such reasoning “in Ethics”? To set the stage for my answers, I begin with an overview of the early Wittgenstein’s view of ethics and aesthetics, emphasizing two ideas that were retained in his later view of aesthetic reasoning: the moral importance of non-moral …

Toward A Philosophy Of Race In Education, Corey V Kittrell

Doctoral Dissertations

There is a tendency in education theory to place the focus on the consequences of racial hegemony (racism, Eurocentric education, low performance by racial minorities) and ignore that race is antecedent to these consequences. This dissertation explores the treatment of race within critical theory in education. I conduct a metaphysical analysis to examine the race concept as it emerges from the works of various critical theorists in education. This examination shows how some scholars affirm the scientifically discredited race concept by offering racial essentialist approaches for emancipatory education. I argue that one of consequences of these approaches is the further …

In Sickness And In Health: Analyzing The Ethical Limits Of The Marriage Between Health Care And The Market In The United States, Thomas D Harter

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation aims to determine what should be the appropriate base ethical limits of health care markets in the United States. I argue that because we do not value health care goods and services as commodities, treating them as commodities available for market sale can only be ethical when health care markets accord with at least the principles of honesty, respect for autonomy, and increased access to essential health care goods and services.

I begin by establishing the theoretical foundation of my argument by expositing three theories of commodification and ethical markets that critically examine the relationship of goods to …